


Five, Four, Three, Two, One (Zero)

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Backstory, Episode: s04e13 Quarantine, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Jossed, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:37:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag to S4 'Quarantine': John knows where he came from; Rodney know who he is.  Jossed by Outcast, but I wanted to give John a loving, caring family who were also very dysfunctional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five, Four, Three, Two, One (Zero)

**Author's Note:**

> beta by inkscribe.

> Douglas felt John walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. "So long," he said.
> 
> Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now.
> 
> Far away, a train whistle sounded.  
> [Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury](http://www.raybradbury.ru/library/novels/wine/entire_english)

 **Five**

J.C.'s record for short moves was the one after Japan, when he and his mother moved in with his father's parents, ostensibly to give them a stable home while his father worked through a series of assignments all over the country. Four of his father's brothers and sisters lived within a five mile radius of his grandparents' house, and he couldn't spit without hitting a cousin. J.C. had never met any family before (something to do with moving around, he supposed), but most people seemed to like theirs, and he was willing to give it a try.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/busaikko/pic/0006qc8g/)   


Two weeks after crossing his grandparents' threshold with his mother's suitcase battering his knees, J.C.'s Aunt Darnine, lips tight-mashed together, drove him up to the ER for stitches and a cast. His mother came to get him in her Chevy, all their things packed neatly on the backseat. She didn't say a word until they were on the interstate, heading west.

"My momma always told me, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," she said finally, flicking the end of her cigarette out the open window. "Lord help me, I can't think of one nice thing to say about those people." She reached across and rubbed her hand over J.C.'s hair, mindful of the bruises, and grinned sideways at him. She wore a green shirtwaist and had a matching scarf over her hair, holding back curls so yellow they were nearly white. J.C. thought she looked beautiful. "Put some music on now, Johnny C., we got a ways to go."

They sang along with the radio all the way to Missouri: Elvis Presley, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton; Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and maybe a little Diana Ross, too. J.C.'s mother believed anything worth learning was worth learning by heart. In addition to his schoolbooks and a lot of the King James Bible, J.C. also had a whole jukebox in his head, every record his mother owned (in the milk crate on the backseat floor) and all the hits on the radio, indelible. His mother also believed that you could make a thing not-happen if you did a good enough job of forgetting it. J.C. worked on this with every mile that spun between him and the Pacific.

J.C. thought he ought to be afraid when he saw his father jumping the cement-block steps from the trailer, unsmiling, so he set to work taking things from the car while his parents talked. It was not as easy as it ought to be, what with his hand all done up in plaster. Inside, he stowed his suitcase and boxes under the sofa where he figured he was going to sleep, and then looked around furtively. He felt exposed in the living room and he couldn't go in the bedroom, where his parents were still talking, only now behind a door. He went out back into an overgrown yard that tipped down into a tangle of scrub. The late summer heat sat heavy on his skin. He watched a thunderhead build out to the west, over the base.

The aluminum door rasped open and clanged hollowly shut, and J.C.'s father called for him. He walked around front slowly. His father, in his undershirt (perfectly white, ironed and starched), handed him a soda, dripping wet and cold.

"Your mother must've driven like righteous fury," his father said, and the shake of his head was admiring. J.C. could see the heat still rising from the engine. He was caught between reflexively straightening and wanting to hunch over and hide. "She stop at all on the way?"

"We stopped," J.C. said. "For sleeping, and things." They'd slept in the car, reclining the front seat as far as it would go, and they'd pulled over to use the toilet and to stock up on Little Debbie's and Marlboros.

"Things, right," J.C.'s father said, almost smiling, and took a long swallow of his beer. "Do you even know what a bastard is?"

"Yes, sir." J.C. sipped, just enough to feel the bubbles burning. It felt a little like wanting to cry. He'd wanted to cry when he was being kicked. He'd stopped wanting to cry when his cousins said the things they did.

J.C.'s father looked him full in the face. "You were two years old when I married your mother. I don't know who put you in this world, but he sure as hell isn't your father. I am." He took a long slow pull from his bottle; J.C. watched his throat as he swallowed. J.C.'s earliest memory was of crying for his mother, and of being smacked silent; just that, crying, and sudden inexplicable pain. He was working hard to not remember it, because what good was something like that? His father was still talking, in the same quiet, strong voice that he used when he taught J.C. how to shoot.

"I chose you and your mother. You remember that. I didn't choose Darnine or any of them." He finished his drink and let the bottle dangle loose in his hand. "Anyone calls you a bastard again, you flatten them."

J.C. frowned. He _could_ have flattened them: his father'd taught him how to take care of himself. If he hadn't been trying to get along with his cousins like he'd been told to do. If there only hadn't been three of them. "Yes, sir."

"We'll have a look at the engine tomorrow," his father said, rapping the hood of the car with his knuckles. "Think it's going to rain soon." J.C. tried to finish his drink fast, feeling naked. "Your mother's baking biscuits to take round to the neighbors. You'll need to change into something clean."

"Yes, sir," J.C. said again. His mother was reading him the story of Alice's Adventures through the Looking-Glass; he thought this was how it would feel to be on the other side of a mirror. His mother in the kitchen, his father's arms brown and strong, himself with red dirt on his shoes. Everything normal, everything ordinary, and nothing in any way the same.

 **Four**

"So I'll buy you that beer," Sheppard said, speaking figuratively. The beer was already bought and paid for, stored under his bed with all the other crap he stocked up on from Earth. Chocolate bars, bags of Doritos, instant pudding mixes, and God only knew what else. Rodney knew Sheppard kept all that stuff around as bribes or some kind of carbohydrate-based form of emotional bonding; he also knew that it worked really well.

So Rodney followed Sheppard back to his room, and he told him the whole sorry story of the proposal that wasn't. . . and the relationship that wasn't. . . and the things that he'd thought he knew and thought and believed, that had all turned out to be wrong. He'd even confessed, several beers into the evening, that something about Katie's way of getting clippings to root and thrive had made him think about having children. Sheppard had broken out the Terra chips for that, which was kind of like a hug, only probably more lasting.

"Can you keep a secret?" Sheppard asked, sprawled flat on his stomach, his head on one arm and the other curled around as if hiding something, like a Creepshowed comic that he was sneak-reading after bedtime.

"No," Rodney said immediately, turnabout being fair play, and Sheppard twisted around just enough to give him a look, a sarcastic _ha, ha, yes you're very funny_. "Well, yes, probably. Wait -- I'm going to need more beer if we're bonding."

"Help yourself," Sheppard said, and waited while Rodney pulled out bottle after bottle until he found the good microbrew, hidden in the back.

"So," Sheppard said, the weird angle of his face making him look perversely mischievous. "So, ask me."

"Animal, vegetable, or mineral," Rodney replied on automatic.

"No, no, just stop a minute, okay? _Ask_ me." Rodney stared, having traumatised failed-proposal flashbacks, and Sheppard sighed. "The _don't ask, don't tell_ kind of asking."

Rodney was getting better at subterfuge, he thought, so hopefully he'd managed to keep some of his appalled feelings off his face.

"Never mind," Sheppard said, bright and false, dropping his head back and staring at the door as if it perplexed him.

Rodney guessed that despite his best efforts his face had broadcast everything, loud and clear, but not in a language that Sheppard understood. Then again, he wouldn't have expected Sheppard to be fluent in flummoxed any more than he'd have expected Sheppard to be --

"Are you really?" he blurted out, and Sheppard gave him a dark look.

"Queer? Pretty much. Yeah."

Rodney crossed his arms defensively. "Is this one of those things that everyone besides me knows, like where to buy drugs and who is dating who and how to say _Where's the toilet_ in Athosian without saying _I fuck goats_ by accident?"

Sheppard's eyebrows hit high elevation at mention of goats. "No, Rodney," he said in his maddeningly calm flight-instructor voice. "You're the first person I've told -- " his eyes flicked to the side, checking his memory, before adding, tentatively -- "ever, I think."

"Oh." And because that sounded stupid, Rodney said it again. "Oh." He looked down and Sheppard looked up, and there was just no stopping the cat-that-got-the-cream smile as the implications began to register. He tried to not sound like an ass. "I'm. . . honored. Really. It's." He had no idea how to finish that sentence, and the phrase _John Sheppard's Flying Circus_ rattled around in his head until he gave himself a mental slap. "I won't tell anyone," he added in a rush. "I can keep my mouth shut."

"You can look smug, knowing, that kind of thing," Sheppard said magnanimously. "It will drive people wild."

"My God, you're _right_." Rodney opened his new beer and sipped. "No, wait, you're horribly _wrong_ , everyone would think that it was some Katie thing, that I was -- gloating, throwing off the old ball and chain, on the rebound, being a total asshole. I'm going to have to look, I don't know, what's the fine line between upset and relieved that won't have people trying to fix us up again?"

"No one's going to fix _you_ up again," Sheppard said, rolling over onto his back, sticking his knees up, and putting his hands under his head. "Dr Brown, though -- a lot of people are going to line up to console her."

Rodney closed his eyes because he knew that was true. He really, really had gotten used to not being alone. He said so, or said something like it, not very eloquently and at length. Sheppard grunted.

"What, that doesn't even rate a snack-pack of Cheetos?"

Sheppard grinned in a way that wasn't amused. Almost as if he was sad -- _I can feel your pain_ , Rodney thought, realising with alarm that he was extremely drunk and needed to go home _now_ before his already inadequate internal censors failed. He'd heard somewhere that Sheppard had been married, past tense, but never any of the details. There were a lot of ways a marriage could go wrong; especially, he thought, if it were Sheppard. He didn't think he'd ever want to know badly enough to ask.

"You could probably still get her back if you grovelled nicely enough," Sheppard said, and Rodney couldn't tell if the cold in his voice was because he was being deliberately vicious. He probably was. Sheppard wasn't an equal-opportunity insulter like Rodney; he saved the really painful jibes and calculated bullying for his closest friends, as if he thought they might be shamed into bettering themselves, or something. It really wasn't endearing; neither was the fact that whenever he'd been driven to thinking he'd be better off rid of the man, Sheppard would do something stupid like save Rodney's life.

"The thing is, I don't want her back," Rodney said, and that was definitely -- the thing.

"Then suck it up, McKay," Sheppard said, and Rodney was so close to bashing him on the head with a beer bottle that he scared himself and had to count to a hundred by primes.

"Fine," he said, after ninety-seven. "I'm going home then."

Sheppard didn't say anything. While Rodney'd been contemplating assault, Sheppard had fallen asleep on the floor.

 **Three**

J.C.'s parents never took longer than a week to find a place in whatever community they moved into. Neither of them understood childhood; not modern 1970s childhood, television and PixieStix and store-bought clothes. J.C.'s father had fought in World War II, which made him as old as some of his friends' grandfathers; he told the same grandfatherly stories, about his parents packing their too-many children into the truck and driving west, out of the Dust Bowl. His mother wasn't _old_ , but she'd been the oldest girl in her family, and after raising up her younger siblings she'd been stuck with the job of taking care of J.C.'s grandfather after her mother passed. J.C.'s parents agreed that the most important thing was to make sure he had the skills to survive.

Because his father had been throwing balls at him all his life, he was good enough at sports, so J.C. found a place quick enough in each new school.. He joined every game he could, baseball, football, soccer, basketball; he could ride a skateboard when he could borrow one, the same with a bicycle. Everyone, including himself, knew that he was in transit, that he'd be gone sooner than later, but if there was a game _today_ , well, then he was one of the first picked. From ages eight to eleven he carried his football with him everywhere. Football was a man's game, his father told him, and J.C. figured -- rightly -- that the sooner he was a man, the better.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/busaikko/pic/0007708s/)   


His father taught J.C. how to keep up his mother's car, as well; when his father was away, it was J.C.'s responsibility. He learned so much about cars that when his father started letting him drive, after a growth spurt at twelve finally got his feet down to the pedals, he felt like he'd been doing it forever. Guns were something else he was raised with: J.C. barely remembered the first time his father'd taken him shooting, and he learned pretty much everything his father was paid to teach. His father wasn't much bothered about licenses: he said he figured he knew his boy better than any paper-pusher (he'd also lied about his own age when he'd enlisted; he said Sheppards grew up fast, but J.C.'s mother just smiled and said that's what came of carrying the weight of the world).

When J.C. was eleven they moved to West Africa, and J.C. -- unlike most of his friends, as he would find out later -- learned that his parents had been basically right about everything.

His father let him drive into the bush, over roads where the asphalt had cracked into red mud. He played soccer with the town children while his father worked, taking off his shoes and risking chiggers because it wasn't fair to be the only one not barefoot. But what his father taught these people, or told them, whatever he _did_ while J.C. ran under the relentless sun, it was the same as oiling a machine that was winding tighter and tighter, getting ready to snap. When the rice riots broke out (not relieving the tension, but making it as obvious as a tsunami bearing down on a port), his father left him in the house with his mother and the gun, and J.C. had known what he might have to do, even though -- in the end -- he didn't. His father, the next time they were out in the bush, taught him to shoot an M16A1: it was only evening things out, his father said, bracing him from behind, considering the number of forty-dollar Kalashnikovs around.

J.C. once stole a box of LemonHeads from the Shoppette in Kentucky. It had been on a dare, and he had been ashamed enough of himself that he knew he deserved it when his father hit him, the first and last time. He saw his father nearly strike his mother in West Africa, in anger that only years later he realised was also fear. At the time, it was the most frightening thing he'd ever seen, and he had seen horrors by then. They'd stood frozen, his father's hand up, his mother's eyes large, and John trying to work up the nerve to stand between the both of them, because that was what his father had told him was more important than breathing, to protect his mother.

Then his mother had nodded and said, _Of course, William._ As if it was right to leave everything behind -- her sewing machine and all her records, J.C.'s guitar, the shortwave radio. She packed her purse and J.C.'s schoolbag with one change of clothes each, her sewing box, and her Bible. On a belt under her shirt she carried their passports and several tight rolls of American money. John's father put them in the car, rapped on the roof, and stayed behind as they drove off through the predawn rain out to the airstrip, to the last plane to leave before the coup.

The plane they were evacuated on had only enough fuel to reach Morocco. There were three other flights after that; J.C. felt increasingly unreal as they made their way to and through Europe. The air was too cold and dry, and there were too many white people. They finally came to rest in Lakenheath, for no reason that J.C. ever knew. The subject of J.C. going to school never came up; he was happy enough to stay on base. The Combat Search and Rescue pilots let him run errands, fetching coffee and cigarettes, and he offered his skills as their personal auto mechanic. After a few weeks he had them entirely charmed and finally got his hands on his first helicopter engine (HH-53B; two years later, Lakenheath was home to _Pave Hawks_ and J.C. couldn't believe he'd missed out). He knew people were kind because they felt sorry for him. He didn't care.

He learnt as much about flying as they were willing to teach. He played number games with statistics on thrust and speed and armaments. He could (and did, to her amusement) tell his mother the measurements, in feet and metres, for every helicopter Sikorsky had ever developed, and developed a fascination with weather systems. She retaliated by making him take French lessons with the wife of the survival equipment fitter three doors down.

After seven months in England, when the cold and wet summer had turned into wet and cold spring, his mother got the phone call that had them saying goodbye all over again. They now owned a medium-sized suitcase that between them they filled, having had to acquire things like sweaters and warm trousers. Another long trans-Atlantic flight brought them to a place that at least _looked_ (dusty red soil and dark green encroaching vegetation) and _felt_ (sweltering humidity) like home. William Sheppard kissed his wife when she got off the plane in Raleigh, and squeezed J.C. hard, one hand on his shoulder, and he thanked him for taking care of his mother.

After that it was only a matter of settling into American life. J.C. learned which of the identical white-sided houses was home, was tested and placed in the junior year of high school, and threw himself into the school sports programme. He was a skinny fourteen year old, and he hoped that he'd grow another four inches and that all the running and weight lifting would show results _soon_.

It never crossed his mind to worry about being picked on (except for the age thing, but if he made a mistake and forgot to lie about it, that was his own fault; he was old enough to keep his own secrets). Most of his classmates accepted him easily; the rest with a kind of wariness. He didn't think he _scared_ them. Almost everyone had at least one parent working on base, and they understood how easily a person could be dislocated. He was quiet and polite and smiled easily, and knew how to fake all the things he didn't know.

He knew that he wasn't normal. The first time he went surfing on the Carolina coast he remembered the _last_ time he'd surfed, in the rough ocean off Mamba Point, where the undertow pulled like ropes around your legs -- he'd seen people sucked out to sea and drowned, kids mostly. But the surfing had been good, and he went after school with friends from the German embassy.

That last time, they'd found a shallow grave scratched into the sand, arms and legs washing out as the tide hissed up the sand. He'd wanted his father's gun; he'd watched the brush between the beach and the hotel for any movement; he'd run with them back to their embassy, the closest place that felt safe. His father came to pick him up, and on the drive home he'd said nothing, and his father said nothing, not even about the Germans (though he still didn't trust them).

So there J.C. stood, ankle deep in warm jewel-tone water on the other side of the Atlantic, with a leash dragging on his ankle, terrified to turn around because he _knew_ there were men behind him with guns. He knew; he'd seen the bodies. His friends were calling _hey, you coming in?_ , and he knew he had to go. Smiling and moving hurt like walking through glass, but he did it. He always did what he had to do, and he hoped like hell that no one ever found out what was going on inside him.

 **Two**

Rodney spent the next few weeks avoiding Katie, botanists, women, and everyone involved in a relationship, because they all looked at him in a way that made him feel like he had the emotional equivalent of two left feet. Finally, he arranged a post-mortem date with Katie, which was awkward, painful, and suffocating in turns. When it was done he felt the way Sheppard looked after being thrashed by Teyla: sort of a warm masochistic glow, satisfying in a horrible way.

Katie returned his iPod, without even deleting any of the playlists he'd made for her. He told her that she could rename her alien cactus if she wanted (not that he meant to imply that he controlled what she did, or wanted to control her, he hastened to add) -- just that he would understand, if she did. She held his hand and said, no, if anyone deserved to be a cactus' namesake, he did.

He thought, of it all, he'd miss her hands the most, their wiry, clever strength and sureness. He didn't know what, if anything, she'd miss. He was afraid to ask, so he just said goodbye.

He walked around, trying not to feel lost. To distract himself, he settled on a problem that had been at the back of his mind. He thought he was close to an answer, and he refined it into formulae as he stalked along the upper balconies and bridges of Atlantis (short on moors but still possessed of very suitable locales for brooding).

"So," he said, barging into Sheppard's room when the icy wind became too much to bear, even for the sake of sulking like a Romantic hero, "why _tell_ me?"

Sheppard was sitting on the floor surrounded by golfing paraphernalia, with a bucket of warm water that steamed gently, some rags that were the remains of a trademark t-shirt, and three splay-bristled toothbrushes. Sheppard was carefully wiping off a pair of balls when he looked up (more in resignation than surprise), and Rodney had to beat off the _very bad_ and _completely inappropriate_ jokes with a mental stick.

Sheppard lobbed him a rag and mimed towelling his head; when Rodney touched his hair, he realised it was damp.

"I thought it was your department," Sheppard said, eyeing Rodney the way he sometimes did Teyla, as if he might be called on to sacrifice little pieces of himself to hugs or babysitting. "I figured you'd want to be informed, maybe even write some angry letters to, I don't know, your SGC connections." Sheppard shrugged, but Rodney could tell that the casual ease of it was feigned. "I could tell Zelenka next time," he added, his voice making the idea sound questionable, with an overtone of _but what the hell, if it floats your boat_.

"Wait, what?" Rodney said, sitting down on the bed and standing immediately to rescue the magazine he'd just squashed. Something about golf, opened to a centerfold of golf clubs -- and would the horrible innuendo in his head never cease?

"That's my latest issue," Sheppard said, putting the balls aside to smooth his palm over the worst of the wrinkles. "The budget reductions, McKay?" Rodney blinked. Sheppard blinked back. "You _did_ get my e-mail? That _is_ why you're here?"

"Over my dead body does anyone cut my budget," Rodney said, glaring at Sheppard reflexively.

"Well, that's what _I_ thought," Sheppard said. He sprawled over sideways, shoved Rodney's leg out of the way, and tugged a box out from under the bed. He put the magazine in with loving care, and when he shoved the box back he snagged a snack pack of Nutter Butters, which he passed up.

"Oh, my God, cookies." Rodney took three, reconsidered, took another, and then put it back. "You're talking about really bad budget cuts, aren't you?"

"Read your fucking mail," Sheppard said, taking the bag that Rodney held out and flipping it onto the desk impatiently. (And really, if he wasn't going to eat them, Rodney should have grabbed that fourth.)

"That you're gay," Rodney said around a mouthful of crumbs. "Why tell me you're gay? Isn't the whole American military shtick _not_ telling?"

There was an almost tangible beat of silence, and then Sheppard went back to washing his golf balls. "You're not military," he said, rubbing at whatever crud had gotten into all the little holes. "And you told me about Katie."

"You knew about Katie from the start," Rodney said. "You gave me condoms and stupid advice."

"You're welcome," Sheppard said, and even though he wasn't looking up Rodney knew he was smirking.

"Did you think I'd put in a good word for you with Venner?"

That made John look up, horror and amusement warring on his face with that cold deadly seriousness that was a little too raw for Rodney to see these days, and especially if directed at himself.

"Joke," Rodney said, waving a hand. Venner was a new addition to the Waste Heat team and -- Rodney had been sensitivity-trained out of using words like _flaming_ \-- very confident in his sexuality. Venner had no idea what a closet was; Sheppard, on the other hand, probably had no idea what a door was, at least homosexually speaking.

"You might be right about having a mid-life crisis," Sheppard said slowly, with a wry twist to his mouth. Rodney had found out the hard way (a week of frosty silence) that Sheppard didn't like talking about his age -- not so much because of the impending fortieth birthday, but because Sheppard didn't _know_ how old he was anymore. Six extra months here, a Wraith-stolen lifetime returned brutally piecemeal, and the question of age became yet another Sheppard mystery. "I look at you, you've got a legacy, a great bi-galactic neon sign that says _McKay was here_. You've got family. I never _wanted_ to leave anything -- or anyone -- behind. Except that recently, I remember things even I'd forgotten, and I think, there's no one alive but me who knows." He shrugged, looked away, wiped his damp fingers down the seams of his trousers.

"You refused to talk about my eulogy," Rodney said. "I reserve the right to refuse to talk about yours." He frowned, and turned a cookie over and over between his fingers.

Sheppard shrugged. "I Googled my mother once. Didn't get any hits."

"You are such an asshole," Rodney said, and Sheppard grinned, eyes and teeth catching the light in a way that reminded Rodney of wolves in the woods. "I used to play the piano -- I _loved_ playing the piano, but now I don't. How does that add anything to the McKay gestalt?"

Sheppard looked at him in a way that told Rodney he'd just given away more than he'd meant to: a slight squint, a tilt of the head, and then a challenging stare right into Rodney's eyes that sent adrenaline straight to his bloodstream. Shepherd, ha: the man was dangerous, and it would never do to forget that.

"The way you use your hands, I bet you were good at piano." Rodney opened his mouth to tell Sheppard just how good he'd been (there had been spot-lit stages and awards involved), but a vague feeling that Sheppard might punch him kept him quiet. It made no sense -- Sheppard didn't usually resort to non-recreational physical violence with his friends -- but there was still that tension in the air, as if something important was being said just out of hearing range. "I can't requisition you a piano." Rodney didn't _want_ a piano. He wished Sheppard understood that it would be as bad as matchmaking with Venner, if not worse. "I could teach you guitar," Sheppard said, absently, lining all his balls up in neat rows in a beat-up cardboard box. Exactly twenty-four fit, and Rodney's brain stuck on that fact because the conversation they were having did not compute to such a degree that it was surreal.

Sheppard looked up, but his expression was already closing off, like a wave retreating from the shoreline. Rodney could probably teach himself guitar in a day or two. It was just a matter of fingerings.

"Right now?" Rodney said, though he didn't think that was the salient fact.

"Sure." Sheppard looked as if he wanted to say something else. "You could probably teach yourself guitar in a day or two."

"No Johnny Cash," Rodney said. "No country and western, no hard rock ballads, and no golden oldies."

"Well, that eliminates most of my repertoire," Sheppard said, unfolding himself from the floor and putting everything away before taking his guitar out of its case. He fiddled with it a bit, until Rodney shifted impatiently, and then picked out a very sarcastic rendition of the Ode to Joy.

Walking back to his room, with fingers that Rodney hoped wouldn't be aching so badly the next day (much less by his next lesson), Rodney realised that he'd managed to get through the entire evening without thinking and talking about Katie, or about his other failed relationships, or his lack of prospects for the future. He was, in fact, practically cheerful. For that, he supposed he'd let Sheppard get away with his navel-gazing. Perhaps it was just a phase the man was going through.

 **One**

Shep summed up his childhood as _here and there_ ; if pressed, he shrugged and said, _army brat_. His Air Force friends understood that well enough, and they also understood that a recitation of postings wouldn't convey anything meaningful in a small-talk situation. He was fairly sure that life could be just as complicated for someone who'd never been out of their hometown since they were born, but he sometimes envied people that surety of place; knowing which team to cheer for, for example.

He'd never had a place that he thought of as home.

Which was not to say that he didn't know the _feeling_ of home. He felt it when he played sports, remembering his father and all the soldiers over the years who'd treated him as a stand-in little brother. He felt it in school, because he'd always been lucky enough to be pushed up to his level. Every transfer began with a round of placement testing, and when there wasn't a place for him one was made, the way he'd been given his junior high math teacher's old college texts and was told to work through them (incidentally discovering that his math teacher had been very wrong about quite a lot). Shep joined whatever teams he could, when he could, and affected disinterest in school. No one ever knew him well enough to call him on the fact that he had no great talent in the former and too much in the latter.

One of the schools gave him the Mensa test as well as the SAT. Not so much for placement but out of curiosity, he suspected. The guidance counsellor told him he should join, that it would look good on his college applications, but he doubted that. He was going to be an Air Force pilot, and he already knew exactly what he needed to accomplish that. He didn't need to have his intellectual ego stroked; he knew just how smart he was. He was smart enough to fly.

In high school, girls never interested Shep (who still went by J.C. back then): they were all too old or too young. Or something. His parents had raised him with capital-V-Values and capital-M-Manners, so he was charming and he could dance and he was embarrassed by the whole idea of masturbation and sex, especially after his father took him aside for a little talk about laundry. He preferred the abandon of running or catching a perfect wave or loud insulting arguments about sports, which invariably led to headlocks. He liked mowing lawns in the smothering North Carolina heat (it reminded him of West Africa, especially the red dirt) and downing glasses of sweet tea afterwards. He loved shouldering his backpack and heading into the swamps for the weekend with his friends. They climbed rocks and swam in leech-infested waters, slept in tents that stank of mould and sweat, and drank cheap beer from the ABC off route 40 that took fake IDs.

Attending NCSU felt like he'd finally stopped spinning his wheels, like he was finally going somewhere. He became Shep because the graduate student who rented him his room said it was too confusing having a Jason and a J.C. in the same apartment. Jason also said it was a redneck name and didn't suit him ( _he hoped_ , said with a distrustful eye on the guitar case), and Shep said something about casting first stones: who ever heard of a black man called _Jason Mason_?

By the end of the year, Shep loved AFROTC with the sure true-north feeling that it was what he was born to do, and he loved Jason with complete and utter surprise. He'd never in a million years suspected that he _could_ love another person (not to mention him being a fag, he hadn't suspected that at all; but after realising that his father was wrong, that cocksuckers weren't part of a Communist plot to destroy the nation, he didn't let it get to him, much).

There was no question of him not joining POC after field training. He planned on being a pilot: that was a ten-year service obligation, right there. It wasn't until the end of his junior year, when Jason was interviewing for jobs and Shep had been tapped as a Cadet Training Assistant for the summer, that he felt, instead of just knew, that the loves of his life were mutually exclusive. It was a horrible, heart-ripping-out kind of feeling that Shep simply could not comprehend, as if he were straining to see something in the dark.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/busaikko/pic/000783fy/)   


Jason took his master's degree and went to work for a meteorological research station in Belize. He sent postcards, but they had none of the heat and security of waking up in the same bed every morning for nearly three years. _Three years_ , Shep thought, was longer than he spent in most places, and was definitely the longest friendship he'd ever had; not to mention relationship. He didn't like thinking about it, and as he'd never talked about it, either, he found it easier to not-remember as time went on.

Especially once he started flying.

 **Zero**

Rodney supposed that Sheppard was an evil, corrupting influence. But he was such an insidious evil influence, one who looked innocently hopeful and snuck entire Carter family albums onto Rodney's iPod, that it was hard to comprehend the full measure of his machinations. Sheppard was more than willing to stick to teaching the kind of music that Rodney preferred -- his teaching style swung between rigid insistence on getting the basics absolutely perfect and blas carelessness about the actual pieces Rodney learned. He never made any requests; Rodney was the one who, one night well after his bedtime, started picking out Wildwood Flower.

Mother Maybelle knew what she was doing with a guitar, he had to give her that.

Sheppard didn't even look up from whatever graphic novel he was reading until Rodney'd made it once through the song, more or less. Then he sat up, gave a blistering critique, corrected Rodney's fingering and tempo, and made him play it again.

The second time sounded much better.

Sheppard grinned, ear to ear, and said, "I think you've almost got it," and Rodney grinned back. This was what he'd loved about music, the way it transported him to a perfect Zen space with neither past nor future, only the _now_. Which was currently Sheppard's eyes on him, stripped of mocking defences and hungry -- not food hungry, but something like music-hungry, the way Rodney'd been for years.

What none of the flaky New Age people told you about, Rodney thought bitterly, was how coming back from those transcendent heights hurt like bloody hell. The crash after the perfect high, sand and suffocation after a perfect wave, all the weight of the past rushing in along with the fears for the future. Down, down, down, the fall made even worse for the glimpse of blue sky so far above it might as well be lost. Rodney knew the feeling; he was confident that he wasn't wrong with his diagnosis of Sheppard's expression, even though he had a hard time picturing Sheppard in either enlightenment or despair. The man fought too much for either. Or so Rodney had thought.

"I," Rodney said, and whatever he thought he'd seen in Sheppard's eyes was gone; they were the same dirty-water pale as they'd ever been.

"You did good," Sheppard said, his mouth in an easy smile. "I guess you were right about the genius thing."

"Sheppard?" Rodney said. "John."

"You should keep the guitar," Sheppard said. "For practice. Until you can get something better from Earth."

"I realise that denial is a way of life for you," Rodney said, "but we should -- "

"Should what?" Sheppard shoved up from the bed and crossed the room.

"Fine," Rodney said, and took off his jacket. He put the guitar back in its case, which he shoved under the desk, and got up, taking one slow step towards Sheppard. "Then we'll do this your way."

"I'm not sure you could beat me in a fair fight," Sheppard said, his voice dryly amused even as he circled backwards, alert and wary.

"You're just lucky I don't have a gun," Rodney said, and Sheppard's face tightened. Oh, yes: Sheppard had also taught him how to shoot. Huh. Just how far back did this go, Rodney wondered. "You're almost more trouble than you're worth."

"Not the first time I've been told that," Sheppard muttered. Rodney could see his eyes flickering, mapping the room and committing a mental choreography of the worst case scenario. "Christ, I'm sorry, McKay, all right? I'm fucking sorry."

"Oh, I'm sure you are," Rodney said. "Get your ass over here." He pointed at the floor directly in front of him, and then snapped loudly when Sheppard didn't move. "What, are you _afraid_ of me?"

"That'll be the day," Sheppard said. It was really almost an art form, the amount of insolent arrogance his slouching walk could convey and the challenge in the lines of his shoulders as he took his place exactly on the indicated spot.

"Stay," Rodney said. Sheppard's eyes thinned at the insult, and Rodney put his hand over Sheppard's upper arm, covering the scar he knew was there, where Sheppard had been shot by the Wraith. Sheppard's whole body jerked, as if Rodney were a human taser.

Rodney moved his hand to Sheppard's other arm, brushing over the dark fabric that covered the ugly, rough patch of skin where he'd started turning into a bug. "Take this off," he said, plucking at the sleeve.

"I'd really rather you punched me," Sheppard said, but Rodney had honed his glare on academics: he could cow minions at ten paces, and it usually worked on colleagues as well. Sheppard took a breath and unzipped, slipping the jacket off and letting it fall to the floor.

"And this," Rodney said, grabbing a handful of black jersey and yanking it up out of Sheppard's waistband.

"Christ, Rodney, stop already," Sheppard said; Rodney stared, practically unblinking and chin up, until he capitulated. Sheppard had a weird way of undressing, holding each cuff in turn to pull his arms in, and then ducking his head down. It kept the shirt from being pulled inside out, but it was also disconcertingly modest.

"There," Rodney said. "Comfy?"

"Fuck -- " Sheppard started, but the _you_ was swallowed down when Rodney put a hand to the barely visible puncture marks on Sheppard's neck -- _from when I first saw you die_. He needed two hands next, to span the patches of hair that had grown back thinner where shock pads had been attached.

"There should be scars here, too, shouldn't there?" Rodney said, sliding his hands down to where the hardness of bone gave way to the hardness of muscle. "Where you got yourself eviscerated once or twice."

"Please," Sheppard said. "I can't -- "

"There should be more back here, too, probably." Rodney circled around and touched Sheppard's back, free of claw marks. There were two neat gouges under his shoulders, however, that Rodney traced with his fingers, punctures from Kolya's harpoon gun. He could feel Sheppard draw in a sharp breath; he walked back around to stand in front again. "And there's _this_." He put his palm over the Wraith feeding scar -- Sheppard had to be one of only a handful (ha!) of people still breathing who bore that kind of scar. Sheppard was shaking under his hands, and Rodney had to hold Sheppard's chin steady with one hand to make him look him in the eyes.

"This isn't a punishment," he said, and Sheppard's breathing was too fast, like his heartbeat under Rodney's fingers. "It's just -- I _know_ you, John." He tipped his head sideways. "You can touch me. As I understand it, that's how this works."

Sheppard was practically jittering to pieces, but he still reminded Rodney of a wild animal, preparing to battle for its territory. "Why?"

Rodney sighed, feeling at once enervated to the point of exhaustion and collapse, and exhilarated. "Because I realise that you make me a better person -- kicking and screaming, yes, but you _believe_ I can be that person. When even I don't. And because I think I can make you happy. For what that's worth."

Sheppard looked as if Rodney'd taken Teyla's sticks and beaten him. But Sheppard knew how to project calm control even when his heart was being literally stopped. After a moment he said, with a mildness that didn't fool Rodney at all, "It should be the other way around. You know I'll do just about anything for you."

Up to and including cold, calculated murder, Rodney thought, and the idea of ever acknowledging that responsibility was as sobering as ice water.

"I think I'm beyond redemption, though," Sheppard continued, thoughtfully.

"Not as long as you're alive," Rodney said. "You know that."

The silence stretched out.

"I'm terrified," Sheppard said, finally, voice rough and strained, "of forgetting that. It would be. . . real easy. I'm good at forgetting."

"I make a good thorn in the side," Rodney said. "Look -- I'll just -- " He realised that he was still cupping Sheppard's chin with his other hand flat on Shepard's chest, and he let go to make a walking gesture with his fingers, while pointing at the door. "I'll go, and let you think it over?"

"Rodney," Sheppard said. "Make this easy?"

"I would if I could. Look." Rodney grabbed Sheppard's hand and held it against his own chest. "Can you feel that? The last time my heart did that I was on your Air Force pep pills." Rodney paused, waiting for some rejoinder, or anger, even, because Sheppard was very much against his team having anything to do with drugs, for the obvious reasons.

Pegasus knew a thousand ways to fuck a person up, Rodney thought, and here was another example for his collection. Sheppard's hand splayed flat against Rodney's shirt, his fingertips curling in as if he were trying to hold on, and all Rodney could think was that it was too much like Wraith for his liking. He picked Sheppard's hand up again, tempted to just let him go (he'd been warned about playing with fire), but then figured they were already caught in the conflagration. They might as well get warm. He put Sheppard's hand against his own cheek -- and he had never realised how big Sheppard's hands were until he had fingertips against his ear and a palm along his jaw and the corner of his mouth brushed by a thumb.

"There," Rodney said. "Easy."

"You are so wrong it's not even funny," Sheppard said, and leaned in to cover Rodney's mouth with his own.

Rodney couldn't ever recall being kissed with reverence, but that was what it felt like. As if Sheppard were trespassing on sacred ground, as if he were something new and rare and wonderful, as if somewhere there was a law of physics that described his motion always relative to Sheppard's.

It wasn't even so bad pulling away from the kiss because he wasn't alone, and because the mundane details that made up his immediate future involved removing clothing to get his bare chest next to Sheppard's, and Sheppard's hands, clumsy with hesitation, sliding down his back. He managed to shove Sheppard towards the bed, hoping to pre-empt Sheppard overthinking things.

Sheppard did try, at the last minute, to give Rodney an out ( _are you sure?_ ).

Rodney answered by falling on him, more literally than figuratively, which made Sheppard laugh.

Rodney shoved Sheppard back onto the mattress. He had to hold Sheppard in place to kiss him because Sheppard was laughing too hard. Rodney would have been insulted -- the _whole thing_ was insulting -- except that Sheppard really was trying to kiss him back despite his hysterics. Finally, Sheppard simply grabbed hold of Rodney's ass and yanked down -- which, whoa, was good, very good, because Rodney was hard -- and when did _that_ happen? -- and so was Sheppard, and he nearly came from the way Sheppard was grinding up against him.

"You're insane," Sheppard said, twisting and shoving a hand between them, finding Rodney's dick unerringly and palming it through his khakis. "Or maybe I've finally lost it." Rodney rocked into that warm grasp, and he may have made some kind of noise of appreciation. Sheppard answered with a groan of his own, loosed into Rodney's mouth. He ripped down Rodney's zipper, shoved away his boxers, and curled those long fingers around Rodney's dick, which jerked in a kind of desperation. Rodney thrust into Sheppard's strong steady rhythm even as he felt the orgasm start, like the buildup of an electrical charge along the soles of his feet. He tried to give Sheppard some warning -- he'd asked Venner about gay sex but not the etiquette of coming on people -- but his whole body spontaneously misfired in all the great clichs: stars going nova, lightning strikes, nuclear fission, the Big Bang.

When he came back to himself, his body still feeling as if he were accelerating upwards at 1G (and no, he refused to even _think_ stupid g-load puns), he first felt Sheppard's fingers -- not the sticky ones -- stroking his hair. It took him a moment to realise that he was crushing Sheppard flat, and he shifted, pushing himself up. Sheppard made a noise that was not quite relief, and Rodney looked from Sheppard's dilated pupils to his trousers and figured out why. Sheppard's face clenched in concentration, which usually meant that their lives were in danger, but in this case meant that he was trying to bring himself off discreetly.

"I can do that," Rodney said impatiently. Sheppard didn't say anything; he simply grabbed Rodney's hand and rubbed it over the hard outline of his dick. Once and twice and he was coming, silently, his body going absolutely rigid with the force of it before he sagged back to the mattress.

This time Sheppard kissed Rodney slowly, all over, as if he were saying something important, until the kisses became whispers of breath across eyes, cheeks, jaw. Rodney worked his way to the side, slowly.

"Um," Sheppard said. "I can do better."

"Hm?" Rodney jerked out of half-sleep. "That was pretty cool."

Sheppard ducked his head to check the mess. "I came in my pants," he said mournfully. "You came _on_ my pants."

"I _made_ you come in your pants," Rodney corrected.

"That _is_ pretty cool," Sheppard agreed, and kissed Rodney's shoulder.

"I need a shower," Rodney said, waving vaguely. "You should loan me pants."

"You're bigger than me," Sheppard mumbled against Rodney's skin. Rodney was all set to be indignant because, hey, no insults after sex -- and then he realised, hey, sly gay compliment!

"Yes, and you like it," he said, utterly failing to sound suave.

Sheppard kissed him on the mouth with just a flick of his tongue against Rodney's lips at the end. "Yeah. I do." He sat up, looked at the semen-stained mess of his clothes, and stripped quickly. Rodney raced to keep up, only realising as they squeezed in the shower that it was really only comfortable for one.

"You just had sex with your boots on," Rodney said. Sheppard opened his eyes and promptly got shampoo in them. He swore, and Rodney handed him the washcloth, taking the opportunity to study Sheppard. Sheppard, oblivious, picked up his razor, shut his eyes again, and started shaving by touch (which, in Rodney's opinion, explained a lot about the perpetually scruffy look).

"So, McKay," Sheppard said, very neatly missing a half-inch wide strip of stubble along his left cheek. "I know you're straight as a ruler. So what is this, pity?"

"Oh, please," Rodney said, getting out and taking the only towel that Sheppard seemed to own. He fluffed his hair, very carefully, and then dried his arms with the other side of the towel. Sheppard watched him, his face politely blank. "Pity, ha," he said, gaining momentum. "It's not pity, or gratitude, or curiosity. This is all about me being selfish. That's _the_ most important thing -- how selfish I am. I _want_ you. I _want_ this. I _want_ you to be happy and I _want_ you to keep being my friend and I _really_ want to touch you."

"Hey," Sheppard said, his hand warm comfort down Rodney's spine. "Everyone's selfish."

"Yeah, well. Someday," Rodney said, taking the plunge into emotional nakedness himself, "someday you are going to say _this is important to me_ , and I'll say _so?_ , and you won't say anything else but it will be all over, and I'll be alone. Again."

"Maybe," Sheppard agreed, languidly. "But maybe someday you'll say _Colonel, that's an unacceptable risk_ , and I'll take it anyway, and you'll be the one who won't stick around."

"Because someday the gamble won't pay off," Rodney said tightly.

"Sure," Sheppard agreed again, maddening in his affability. "Neither of us needs the hassle of remorse, right?"

"Oh, shut up," Rodney snapped. "Do you even have any idea how annoying you are?"

Sheppard shrugged and caught the towel when Rodney threw it at him. "I wanted this," he said, very quietly, and went to dig out a pair of sweatpants that were too tight on Rodney's ass and too long at the ankles.

The bed was too small for two grown men, but Sheppard shoved it against the wall. They were both used to the Atlantis curl by now, anyway, knees tucking up automatically to keep their feet from dangling off. Rodney, on the side of the bed against the wall, found himself curled around Sheppard, who mumbled something sleepily.

Rodney was so used to offworld missions that he said "Goodnight, Colonel" automatically, and then corrected himself quickly to "Sheppard"; and then finally, "John."

"Whatever," Sheppard said, stretching out one bare, scarred arm to turn the light off. "I don't care. Shep. Sheppard. Colonel. J.C.," he said, and Rodney thought, _what?_ \-- though it totally figured that Sheppard had a secret scary nickname. "You don't have to call me anything. I mean. I'll know when you're talking to me, right?"

And Rodney figured, well, that was true.

 _The End_


End file.
